A Fiery Heart and a Wicked Brain
by foundcities
Summary: A drabble/oneshot anthology chronicling Diana Lawson and her involvement with Rafe Adler, other canon characters, and canon events.
1. A SINGLE STEP

Not only had she just kicked her husband out of her apartment, but now she was sitting in her car, soaking wet from the rain, staring up at Rafe's building. A few yellowish glows were visible through the sunroof of her little hatchback. He'd said once before that she was free to ask him for anything. But did this count? Or did that one group date a few months prior mean nothing? Or it at least meant he'd have sex with her? Just sex?

Since that evening, that gentle hand on her knee, the warmth she felt whenever Rafe laughed at one of his own jokes, he'd seemed to avoid her entirely. Her periodic calls and text messages were met with silence or overly professional conversation. And her final message before this evening reading " _You're all I can think about."_ had gone unseen...or just ignored. It was like when they first knew one another. Like ten years had never happened.

And yet there she was, car parked on his street in front of his apartment building. He was the first person that had come to mind despite the fact that they hadn't seen each other for weeks. Anyone else would have assumed that he wouldn't care, but Diana was still drawn there in this moment of desperation. He was the first thought in her mind after she and Jim had finally agreed on that fateful decision.

She sat in her car for a few minutes, engine off but the radio still playing. Every time her hand reached for the door handle, she found herself hesitating. What if she was reading too much into this? What if he only kissed her all those months ago because he was bored?

Or just because she'd looked alluring to him in that moment? What if she got up to his door and he just laughed at her? Maybe not that far, but if she made it clear that she wanted — NO — needed him, would he return the sentiment?

 _"Fuck it — "_ she muttered under her breath, throwing the door open and entering the building. not caring about the looks people gave her wet, matted hair and soggy clothes. She prodded the button for Rafe's floor in the elevator and ignored the disgusted comment an older woman gave as she left. Diana spent the whole ride in the elevator alone, the wetness in her shoes bothering her every time she shifted her weight. The 'squitching' sound reminding her that she likely looked homeless. It was a wonder that the building's security wasn't being sent after her. Or maybe they just recognized her from her previous frequent visits just to chat or share a couple drinks with Rafe.

Once she was finally at his door, she hesitated again. Those lingering doubts had returned. But she chose to ignore them this time. To refuse to let them stay for longer than a few seconds. Not enough to change her mind on the matter. Besides, she just couldn't be in the same house as Jim right then, even if he was in the process of packing his things and leaving. She pressed the intercom doorbell a few times; a specific code agreed upon by the two of them years ago at his previous place; that way they knew who to answer the door for. However, he didn't open the door immediately like she expected. But considering the nature of their relationship recently, she wasn't letting herself get worried or discouraged just yet. He'd seemed to want to get it all back to being professional like before...Several years before, when they'd first met.

It didn't stop her from getting a tad anxious, though. She stood at the door, squeezing her hands into fists and chewing the inside of her cheek. Her heart raced. More so than the several times in the past when she thought she was going to die. Diana remained there for a while, and right when she considered turning back and going home, Rafe opened the door. They each stood there silently for a moment or two; Diana trying to think of the right way to break the news to him, while Rafe seemed to simply watch her intently. She broke the tension first:

"Jim and I are getting a divorce."

He blinked a few times, head nodding slowly. "Come in," he said, waving her inside. She obliged.

His apartment was at least twenty degrees warmer than it was outside. It was cozy. The place itself was gigantic considering that they were in a building overlooking Central Park, but it was warm and welcoming, unlike the sprawling urban landscape that surrounded it. She heard the door shut with a barely audible _'beep'_ from the security system, and Rafe continued, "What happened? Is he —?"

"No," she assured him, "no, Jim's not hurting me or anything. I promise. It's just..." Diana fell silent. She laced her hands together in front of her stomach, still chewing the inside of her lip for an instant. "A lot of things 've happened, Rafe." She tossed her hoodie over the back of the couch, her arms crossing over her chest in an attempt to preserve some body heat but dry off at the same time.

All she could hear was the crackle of the flame in his fireplace and the rhythmic _'thump'_ of her heartbeat. She didn't know how to string the words together. How whenever she was around Rafe she felt a sharp pang in her chest that she should have felt for her husband, but never quite did. How, instead of the man she'd married, Rafe was the one that had started making her feel dizzy whenever he was in the same room as her. How right now she can barely think over the sound of her pulse because of all these feelings he stirred up in her.

"Rafe," she felt her chest flutter when she said his name, and that had surely been audible — the tiny gasp. If she was reading this all correctly, he would have instantly picked up on that. He wasn't stupid. Not in the least. It was probably one of the reasons she was so fond of him. Diana continued, "I...I don't think...I don't think I ever really loved Jim?" She had no idea why that turned into a question. God, she was a wreck right now. She half-hoped a Vaudeville cane might appear at the front door and pull her out of there before she made a fool of herself.

"Don't feel bad about that," Rafe said simply. He was certainly better at all this than she had ever been.

"I agreed to spend the rest of my days with him..." she trailed off.

Rafe eyed her, implying she continue as he reached waved for her to have a seat on one of the couches in the den. She worried a little bit for the leather, using a throw blanket as a buffer between her and the sofa while Rafe gave her another blanket. "...But I'm here," she continued, "After I tell him I don't love him. That I never really did in the first place, now that I think about it. It was _all_ a lie. I thought that he and I were the same teenagers we were in high school under all the trauma and bravado. But we aren't. I never should have just married him so quickly like that."

He nodded slowly, having a seat beside her. Rafe reached an arm over her shoulders to pull her close, giving her a light squeeze as she made a cocoon out of the blanket. It worked somewhat, but the warmth she felt had nothing to do with his gesture.

Diana continued, "I missed you...but I didn't at the same time. I was mad at you and I wasn't. I wanted to see you again like we used to, but you kept your distance right after that..." Diana blinked a few times, "...The kiss. At dinner a few months ago."

"I don't regret that."

"Yeah, you didn't care about your date — " she tried dismissing it.

Rafe leaned in a bit closer. "That wasn't it."

"Then what was it?"

"...You know exactly what."

"No, I don't."

"Why'd you come here, of all places?" he asked genuinely, but he still seemed to know the answer already, "You could have just gone to the museum or the library and spent some time alone...but you didn't. You came here. You came to me."

He was right. You'd have to be stupid not to have figured it out. Or at least be in complete denial. She replied, taking a deep breath, "I just..."

Diana had no idea how to word it. Of course there was the campy ' _I love you,'_ but she couldn't bring herself to just finish that sentence. It was as if there were a literal wall keeping the words from escaping, lest she misjudged Rafe's kindness as being attracted to her and those little words wrought havoc on what friendship they had left. Whether she liked it or not, he was an important part of her life. They had entrusted their lives to one another on numerous occasions. She couldn't even remember how many times she had Rafe to thank for simplybeing alive to sit in his apartment in that moment.

One little phrase would change the entire nature of their relationship, either for better or worse. The insecure voice that lingered within her was saying that if she let those words slip that she would lose her last good friend for good, while the faintest voice of optimism was telling her to just go for it. Embrace it. If it didn't work...well, she'd figure that out when she needed to. Diana knew how to disappear. Too well.

"I came here because..." _Just power through it._ "...Because it's where I belong. With _you_ is where I belong." _..._ _ **Or**_ _accidentally poetic works. People say 'I love you' too much anyway._

Diana watched as a familiar smug grin played at the corners of his lips. He didn't reply immediately, which terrified her. She felt her hands shake — even more than they normally did — and she knew that the next words she spoke were going to sound frail. Luckily, she didn't have to make a sound because after a couple moments he let out a soft chuckle. "...I'm in love with you too, Di."

She had bowed her head into the blanket as he pulled her closer.

"I'm gonna go make you some coffee...You gonna be okay?"

That was the first time she'd ever heard him sound...genuine. Or anyone sound that genuine to her. She had gotten so used to both hearing others mask their feelings with sarcasm — and done so herself for the past few decades — that to hear someone...care like that was bizarre. But bizarre in a good way. She didn't want to leave. Did she really need to go back to her apartment soon? She could always be _that_ girlfriend and move in on the second day.

"Yeah...I think I'll be fine."


	2. ESTATE

_**A/N:**_ _this isn't really...finished. I just didn't really have a good way to wrap it up, so this might become part one of many. we'll see. i was liking the characterization and development that was happening in here, because diana and her brother chris have never really gotten along._

only a woman as egotistical as diana's mother would have tried to replicate an english countryside estate like this. her mother's side of the family hailed almost entirely from southern scotland, and cecily lawson — neé forbes — had been determined to build her family's "estate" in the same manner. she had persuaded diana's father, richard, to construct their home to look like it had been plucked straight from the hills of the british countryside and placed perfectly in northern california. the property was comprised of several hundred acres of forest with the small cluster of structures nestled throughout, gravel roads connecting them all together.

diana drove her rental suv up the gravel road—her mother had even kept that authentic—thankful that the car's ride was soft enough that she wasn't rocked too far inside the cabin. her purse sat shotgun, zipper ajar while her smartphone was perched inside, positioned to she screen was visible...at least until a big enough divot in the road knocked the bag closed again. she was waiting for a specific notification, or rather hoping not to see it illuminate the screen.

she dreaded seeing her younger brother's name atop a small text bubble appear. one reading that he had already sold her father's enormous garage full of vintage porsche 911s. chris had never quite appreciated the simple beauty of those machines or shared the connection she had to them. for diana, they were the last things of her father that she had. where her love of cars had been born. walking through that gigantic separate building as a little girl with her father, listening to him tell her stories about how he'd found a certain one, or how he had been meaning to repair another and take it for a spin around the property — or estate, as her mother had insisted time and time again.

diana finally arrived at the main house, parking the rental as close as possible to the front door with the back side pointing toward the door. it might have made loading bankers boxes full of the trinkets she liked into it easier as the day progressed.

she had intended to start organizing at least a room's worth of items into separate bins or piles: one to keep, one to trash, and the last to sell or donate. but once she set foot in that foyer again, she realized just how enormous the house was. it was almost a carbon copy of the estate cecily had grown up on in scotland, so there had to be close to a hundred rooms in the damned place...

this was going to be a far bigger project than she had anticipated. maybe chris's arrival before her was a better idea; she wouldn't have had any idea how to begin sorting through their parents' things.

diana hung her keys on the short rail of tiny hooks adjacent to the front door, taking care to hang them on the hook labeled "diana." just like the old days when she'd come home from nights out over the summers between years at boarding school. as she wandered deeper through the first floor of the house, she noticed that few things had been displaced since chris's arrival. diana called his name a couple times, only managing to startle the maid in the progress. the latter left shortly after diana had retired to the library, a space initially intended to be her father's home office but once he passed away cecily commandeered the room as a proper library. hundreds of books were stacked neatly in shelves that covered the walls entirely, save for the few windows looking out on the surrounding hills and trees.

now a few armchairs were set throughout the empty space in the center of the floor, atop an ornate rug befitting the estate the home was meant to emulate.

diana set her bag on one of the small tables that stood between two chairs and had a seat. she could feel the jet lag getting to her already. it wasn't until her travel time was finally over and she sat comfortably in that quiet little room that she felt her body get heavy, and her eyes had to fight to stay open...which wasn't for very long.

* * *

she awoke to her younger brother prodding sharply at her upper arm, not stopping until she swat his hand away. "—good morning to you too, little brother."

"you could've at least texted me that you were in town. i thought someone was robbing the place."

diana paused for a moment, "...just so you know, i flew out here as soon as you called." she chuckled, sitting up straight as chris rolled his eyes and said, "ash and i are working on a game plan to sort through everything up in mom's room," he made his way toward the door, stopping to turn around and finish, "...meet us up there when you're ready."

and with that, she was alone again. diana didn't immediately jump up to follow him upstairs — he said 'when you're ready' right? instead, diana pulled her hair up into a loose bun and glanced out the window at the trees, not quite finding the motivation to move just yet.

her eyes wandered down to where her father's desk should have been. her mother had replaced it with a couch...which made diana wonder where all the desks contents ended up.

"mom put all of dad's things in his old garage as far as i remember." chris glanced between his wife and his older sister, while the latter was already making her way outside to her rental without another word. chris opened his mouth to shout at her, but decided against it.

diana drove as quickly as she could toward the separate building on the property that housed her late father's collection of cars. she threw the door open, reaching for the light switch she remembered was directly next to the door frame. it took a moment, but soon enough the lights all flickered on above various model years of porsche coupes, all the way up through the early two-thousands…the newest of which diana assumed he'd purchased shortly before he passed away almost fifteen years prior. it looked as if no one had touched the garage save to see if anything had been stolen. diana's mother couldn't care less about any of the cars in that building, but she at least knew what they meant to diana and what might happen if she conveniently "forgotten" the garage existed.

as much as she wanted to stay and ogle the cars, she had to indulge her curiosity. she'd never been allowed to go snooping through her father's files he kept in that desk. locked away in those bottom drawers. if her mother had cleaned out his office, she must have had the key to those files. used it to clear them out and store them with his "other children," as diana had dubbed them years ago.

this was just another hunt. all she needed to do was just start looking for clues. hints that would tell her where her mother hid everything. areas that didn't have quite as much dust covering them as others...something out of place, at least.

she scoured every nook and cranny of the toolboxes and shelving units that lined the walls of the garage, finding nothing in there. her mother knew not to just toss everything in there. either she cared more than diana knew, or there was something important in those desk drawers that couldn't just be haphazardly packed away in there.

one of the other rooms in the building maybe? her father's second office? it was on the opposite side of the building, but that gave her an excuse to eye the cars a bit more as she made her way back there.

but when she got to the door, none of her keys to the house worked. not even the one for the garage itself, nor did the key to the house. the former used to work before she left home. diana knew that for certain. either her father changed it in the years before his death, or her mother did in the event she stored his things in there.

she reached for her pocket, finding that she'd left her lock picking kit in her purse...back in the main house. "shit..." diana muttered under her breath despite how no one else was there to hear her speak.

moments later her phone was in her hand and she was dialing her younger brother, who answered, "...i thought you didn't call people."

"i left my purse back in dad's old office."

"...and?"

diana sighed, "...would you mind bringing it to me?"

"come get it yourself."

"i'm at the garage, and i want to keep the gas fill ups to a minimum until my boyfriend can fly out here."

"sounds like a crappy excuse..." he paused, "...fine. i'll bring it out to you. why do you need it over there anyway?"

"you'll see. just bring it here...please."

"only 'cause you said the magic word.

her sibling hung up first, and she was left alone to wait the ten minutes it would take to bring her things to her. but what she hadn't thought of was the fact that his wife ashley would join him. but it wasn't worth diana being an ass to her. she was on a mission. pestering her sister-in-law could wait until she had that office open.

"i still don't see why you need your purse." chris said, tone flat.

diana didn't reply. instead, she fished out what looked like a swiss army knife from one of the inner pockets of her bag. she flashed the other two a coy smirk and knelt down to get to work picking the lock...at least until she noticed a thin tube projecting through the doorframe, right beside the lock mechanism. she murmured another expletive under her breath, eyes following the tubing up toward the ceiling.

"what...?" chris dragged the syllable out.

"this—" diana tapped the tubing running along the door frame, "— wasn't there before."

"what wasn't there before?" he repeated, voice still relatively inexpressive.

"mom put an alarm system in since i left. gotta find the fuse box for it and shut it down...can't be newer than ten years so cutting off its power should do the trick." this was pretty fun. it was like breaking into a museum again. but this time she wasn't after an old trinket to sell to her client. she followed the tubing that housed the wiring for the alarm system along the ceiling, all the way around to the front door, and outside. some more careful attention to detail and soon the three of them were at the fuse box outside. none of them had a key to the padlock keeping the panel closed, so she did the next best thing. diana drew her .45, motioned for the other two to stand back, and fired a shot into the padlock, breaking it's hook.

she let out a triumphant laugh as she unhooked the lock, tossing it aside while she threw the panel open. every switch inside was labeled with something like "lighting" or "power tools" but one switch simply wasn't labeled at all. none of the others said anything about being for the alarm system, so diana tried shutting the mystery switch off. she waited a moment, resting an ear to the wall in case it did have some kind of failsafe or backup power that would set the alarm off.

...nothing. it was dead silent in there. a burglar alarm would have been loud enough even to be heard through the brick walls.

ashley finally said something directly to diana, a first considering she'd technically been in the family for about ten years. "...how do you know all this stuff about breaking and entering."

"work." diana said simply. she couldn't stand the other woman, and wanted to keep the illegal nature of her profession as secret as possible.

"how, though?"

"...i test the security of burglar alarms." a it was only mostly a lie. even chris must have had an inkling toward her work by now, considering she was a history buff but she conveniently knew how to identify a burglar alarm system, much less disable it before picking a lock.

"uh huh." ashley was finally getting wise. diana could hear it in her voice.

once again, as soon as they were at the door to the office diana had her lock picking kit in hand...this time ready to get the door open and see what their parents had been hiding.

"...so—" chris said behind her, "how does all...that even work?"

"...are you asking me how to pick a lock, chris?"

"no! i've just...i just never knew how that stuff worked is all."

"takes practice," diana said, wiggling one of her tools into the mechanism, "...there're these little pins inside that are set in a way that the key's pattern, when inserted, puts them all perfectly in line with one another. all this is is me trying to replicate that pattern. but to do it quickly—" she paused as she got the right combination and turned the lock, "—takes some finesse." she punctuated her tiny tutorial in petty larceny by opening the door and a gesture for the other two to enter.

ashley grimaced slightly, but did as diana bade while chris just stared incredulously at his older sister.

one of the other two flicked the lights on, revealing that diana's father's old secondary office had been turned into a makeshift storage unit for his things, with both of his old desks in the center of the room, surrounded by banker's boxes and moving boxes full of all kinds of things. old paperwork, all of the worldly trinkets that once decorated the library...everything diana associated with her father that wasn't the cars outside was in this room. even all the framed posters and pieces of art inspired by the porsches outside were still on the walls.

but while chris and ashley weaved their way through the piles of boxes, diana's focus was on one thing: that old ornate desk that once sat in the library. lockpicking kit still in hand, she went straight for that piece of furniture.

as diana was struggling to get one of the locks open, chris looped back around to find her there. "aren't you going to look around?"

"as soon as i get these damned things open."

"what's so special about those?"

she glanced up at him, "dad never let me in these, and i haven't been here since i moved out. now that both mom and dad are gone, no one can stop me from finding out what the hell they had to hide. dad was an open book. locked drawers with stuff in them—" she rapped her knuckles on the drawer, emphasizing the slight muffle in the sound, "—doesn't sound like my father."

"our father."

"same difference—the point is that whatever's in here is incredibly important. possibly classified. what if dad was former cia and we never even knew? it would explain why he was always so careful about shredding mail that had our names on it before we threw it out."

"or he was just trying to prevent identity fraud. maybe it's just a stack of playboys in there."

"possible, but unlikely." diana, still unable to get the lock open, gave up and instead yanked the drawer above it out and shoved it under the desk. a wood panel still stood between her and her bounty. "fuckin' hell..." she muttered, feeling around for a seam or something that might let her pry it open at least.

but she came up with nothing.

"you're fuckin' kidding me..." maybe she could use a screwdriver anyway, just break the damn thing open with a few hard stabs into that barrier and pry still pry it open. it wasn't as neat and tidy as she normally would have done, but she didn't need to preserve the desk at all. if it had been worth something her mother would have told her years ago...or maybe she did.

if diana couldn't remember there was no use in paying it much mind. at first, she tried driving her lock picking kit into the wood, but the latter was too thick to make much more than a scratch. "hey, chris! y'mind grabbin' me a hammer outta one of the toolboxes out there?" she said, still trying to find away to get it open.

moments later, he placed a hammer beside her, which she immediately grabbed and started swinging the prying end into the material...which worked like a charm. a few splinters nearly flew into her eye, but she had a way into the drawer. a few well-placed hits at the locking mechanism, and she was able to pull the drawer out and get it on the floor.

she began to move over to the other side to repeat the process, but one of the tabs in the files caught her eye.

a tab reading: "himalayan expedition."

"the hell...?"

"find something?" ashley said from the other side of the office.

"...yeah." diana trailed off. she never remembered her father ever saying anything about going to the himalayas for business. and the word 'expedition' especially caught her attention. expedition was a very specific word.

she pulled that file folder out and immediately began flipping through the sheets of paper that had been torn hastily out of journals. the last one she stopped on had been about halfway through the stack of papers, and handwritten in all capitals at the top of it read "SHANGRI LA?"

...no way. it couldn't be.

but it would explain why her father had been so encouraging when she'd told him she wanted to go into treasure hunting for a living. she read further, finding that her father had spent a good three years before she was born trying to find the ancient city. he hadn't, of course. he didn't have the oil lamp and marco polo's journals like nathan had...but it was the principle.

seemed as if the apple hadn't fallen far from the tree. it made her think about how her father would have reacted if he'd been alive the extra years for her to come home and tell him what she and her friend had found...and subsequently destroyed. how her father likely would have been immensely proud. maybe a tad jealous.

how had she never known this? why would her parents keep this from her and chris?

it wasn't until she had broken into the other drawer and found the folder labeled "FINAL EXPEDITION—1976" tucked far in the back. it held a single sheet of notebook paper with a note written in her mother's handwriting. "no more." it read, underlined repeatedly until the pen had begun to dry out and scratched holes in the paper. nothing else. not even an explanation.

...diana's father had a bit of a limp when she looked closely. he never moved faster than a walking pace, never lifted heavy objects and always had her help repair the porsches once she'd gotten old enough.

the only thing diana could think of was that her father had sustained an injury that nearly killed him...and now the more she gave it thought, the more she realized why her mother acted the way she did once diana made it clear that she was going to go out there and look for mythical objects. it wasn't just teenaged angst or her mother disliking her.

her mother didn't want to see her daughter meet the same fate her father did, or even end up dead because of her profession. now diana couldn't take anything back that she'd said about hating her.

at least now she had material for her eulogy later that month: a long-overdue apology.

gently, diana slid that file back where she found it, taking a moment to let this discovery sink in...and realize how terrible of a person she was for treating her mother the way she did for all those years. she buried her head in her hands for a moment before her brother's voice interrupted her, "you got 'em open!"

she didn't say a word, but rather nodded slowly and forced herself to stand.

"...woah—what's all that stuff?"

"...turns out i wasn't the first treasure hunter in the family," she replied simply. she took another file out of the second drawer; one marked simply as "cuba." but once she took that one out, it wasn't filled with miscellaneous sheets of notebook paper...it was filled with neatly printed sheets of paper bearing the cia insignia at the top.

she quietly muttered, "...what the fuck, dad?" diana fanned through the sheets, finding that a good three quarters of the information had been redacted with thick black lines. page after page of black stripes across the text, and no matter how hard she tried looking at it under the light she couldn't decipher any of it. it was almost as if she wasn't supposed to know what those papers said.

the woman sighed heavily, leaving that folder out. her brother said, "is that...?"

"redacted? yeah. looks like dad did some of the cia's dirty work too..." she stood from the floor, tossing the cuba file onto an empty corner of the desk. "help me get these out to my car, would ya?" diana gestured toward the desk drawers at her feet, not even moving to look at her brother as she gave the order. he did as she requested, stacking one on top of the other and hauling them outside. diana's gaze was fixed on that almost-entirely-redacted file. of course, her curiosity was going to get the better of her.

as far as she could assume, it was similar to the one time that mi6 had asked for her to get them into a black market arms smuggling ring. her father might have been in the same boat: he had connections, and a government agency wanted to use them. that was all she could surmise at that point. unless it was a probationary mission. maybe he'd gotten arrested and his way out was by helping the cia for a time.

...something happened the year before she was born that made her parents want to hide all of this entirely. and it had to be big, or else they would have at least told her when she was a teenager. but this...they kept this secret to their graves. or at least for her to dig up on her own once they were gone.

if only she had a way to contact that mi6 agent again. use him to find someone in the cia that might have been able to help her find a clean version of this cuba file.

for now she would have to settle for bringing all of it back to the house to analyze it all further.


End file.
